After the War
by wjames260
Summary: This is the original, unedited version of a story I'm currently uploading. I thought about taking this one down, but I like the idea of the writing process, with all its ugliness, presented in an honest and public way.
1. Chapter 1

When he sees her, he doesn't really see the white eyes, anymore, or the fall of her dark hair, or the shape of her breasts hidden under her baggy clothing. Instead, he sees bits of memories, flashes of aspirations, and the ebbs and flows of emotion, like swirling eddies caught within themselves. He sees the way she walks, the gait of her steps, the way she moves forward. And, he sees the way she watches things sometimes, she might look at the bowl of ramen in front of her and just watch it, or she might stop at some street corner and just watch the heads of people passing by or she might be crossing a bridge and just watch the stonework or the sounds of the water underneath or where the river leads.

"Hinata," he says and she turns to look at him. She'd been watching a fence-post where somebody had sprayed their name in graffiti and then somebody else had painted over it in a slightly off-color paint than the fence itself.

"Naruto," she says and a smile slips onto his face. Her face is pale and beautiful, in the right lighting in can seem to glow.

"I was just thinking, we should head towards Flint Street."

"Okay, what's going on over there?"

"Some of the guys are meeting up at a bar, I guess. Kiba'll be there."

She pauses and looks off in the direction. He purses his lips and remembers she doesn't much like the bars. She says there just so much input and you're in this confined, dark space full of other people getting less and less cognitive.

"I mean," he starts and she looks back at him, "I know your limit is sort of low, you know, but you don't have to drink, obviously. I will, but, well."

"It's fine, I like drinking, too, just not as much as Kiba."

"Right."

Then, they are quiet again. Sometimes, he hates it like this, when she goes so quiet and he feels like he has to talk and she just watches him. Sometimes, though, he likes it.

"Are you okay, Naruto?"

"Hmm? I'm fine."

"Okay."

"Yeah. So, are you coming with, or.."

"Yeah."

"I think Sakura will be there, eventually. I know Ino will."

"I'll go, c'mon," she says, taking his arm. As they walk, the street-lamps start turning on.


	2. Chapter 2

"We girls always have to have a drink in our hands, you know, just to hold something," Ino declares, some redness in her cheeks and something bright but dim in her eyes, "And then, then we can't ever set it down 'cause who knows what people are gonna do."

"Yeah, but you can trust the bartenders, usually," Tenten responds, "They watch out for the girls."

"Not always! I've heard of some of the ones down at Sheep's giving girls over-saturated drinks."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's all part of the men's scheme, you know, to get us drunk and fuck us. I'm not saying all bartenders are in on it but I'll trust a woman pouring my drinks before a man."

"Yeah. No, I understand that."

"Of course. So, Hinata… What're you drinking, what is that?"

"Um, lime soda."

"Any gin?"

"A little."

"A little, can I try it?"

"Sure," she says, handing her glass over. Ino takes a small sip and then hands it back.

"There's like, nothing in there."

"Well," Hinata says, looking off across the bar. There are people everywhere, lingering near the bar-top, leaned against walls and tables, crowded around the jukebox and the pool-tables. She can see, past the heads of everyone, Naruto and Kiba shooting pool. He's bent over, a look of concentration on his face, aiming the cue while Kiba stands off to the side, laughing and holding both their drinks, taking a sip from one and then the other.

"Well, It's whatever," Tenten says, smiling at her, "Probably a smart move, not to get too drunk."

"She won't get _any_ drunk, like that," Ino points out.

"You were just now complaining about bartenders over-saturating girls' drinks!"

"Yeah! But, still. Where's Sai at, anyway?"

"I think he's in the bathroom."

"Hmm," she says, grinning coyly, "Here, Hinata, you can have my drink. It's like the opposite of yours. It has ginger in it, and some lemon-lime stuff, sour, they call it, and a bunch of whiskey. Take it, drink it, or don't, whatever. I'll be back later."

Then, she stands up off the bar-stool and adjusts her bangs and undoes her ponytail before striding off, slipping through the people milling about and disappearing into the boy's bathroom.

"Is she-" Hinata starts, holding both drinks.

"Yep," Tenten responds, sipping her own.

Then, they are quiet together and listening the sounds of the bar. All the shouting and chattering, the music playing over the speakers, the odd clack of pool balls. The place is full of noise, of people ordering drinks and people gossiping and flirting and talking about their lives. The music plays across all it it, filling in the empty spaces. It's dance music, quick and rhythmic beats, some singer shouting out with the velvet of her throat.

"Do you like this song?" Tenten asks, setting her drink on the bar-top.

"What?"

"Sit where Ino sat."

Hinata nods and slides the drinks over and sits in the still warm stool. Immediately, some guy snatches her old seat and orders a drink. She keeps her back to him but feels him watching.

"Do you like this song?" Tenten asks again, eyeing the guy over Hinata's shoulder.

"I guess so. It seems fun."

"It's catchy."

"Yeah."

"Good dance music. Do you ever dance? I don't think I've ever seen you dance."

Hinata shakes her head and Tenten clucks her tongue and then laughs.

"I bet Naruto dances, though."

"Well, sometimes."

"He's pretty exuberant. I bet he'd be great at a weeding reception."

Hinata laughs and Tenten watches the guy behind her.

"Hey, what's your name?" he asks, tapping Hinata's shoulder.

"Never Yours," Tenten responds.

"I didn't ask you."

"I know. C'mon, girl, let's go join the others."

"Okay," she responds, taking Ino's drink as she stands up and tries not to look at the guy who hit on her.

"Hey, buddy," Tenten says to him, pointing at Hinata's drink she left on the counter, "You can have that one there. Maybe you'll get an indirect kiss."

He just laughs and they both leave, weaving their way through the people. As they make their way around the dance floor, another guy tries to grab at her shoulder but TenTen pushes him away and they keep going, towards the relative calm of the pool tables.

All the tables are taken and there are crowds of people around most of them. But the one Naruto and Kiba play at is out of the way, near a corner, without any people lingering and waiting around for it to open up.

"Kiba, Naruto!" TenTen calls as they get there.

"Yo!" Kiba shouts, raising both drinks.

"Hey," Naruto says, looking up from measuring the play he's about to make, "Hey, Hinata."

"Hi."

"Who's winning?" Tenten asks.

"Me!" Kiba shouts, some glint in his eyes.

"Shut up," Naruto says, leaning back over to shoot. They all watch as the cue clacks agains the white ball and then the white balls bounds away, narrowly missing the shot and rolls to a stop near a corner-pocket.

"Shit," Naruto says.

"Nice shot, man."

"Yeah."

"My turn," Kiba says, handing the drinks to Naruto and taking the cue.

"Why do we have to hold these? Let's just set them on the edge of the table."

"Whatever, dude."

"Did you drink from mine?"

"Yep."

"You bastard."

Laughing, Kiba sets up his shot and Naruto sets the drink down on the edge of the pool table and then picks up his own and takes a sip and looks across the table at Hinata. She smiles and he smiles back.

"Kiba, you're gonna miss," Tenten says, "Aim for the two-ball, instead."

"I'm stripes."

"I know."

"Listen, Tenten, I am the best player in the Konoha Eleven, no doubt."

"I heard Sai is really good."

"Well, he's not one of the Eleven, anyway."

"Neji would beat you."

"Well," Kiba says and takes the shot. The ball drops in the hole with a thunk. He looks up and smirks.

"Ug, my turn," she says, taking the cue.

"What? You're not in this game. Take the next one."

"I'll take Naruto's set. I'll come from behind and win."

"What? No way, I want to beat him. Naruto-" and when he looks over he sees he's gone, "Where?"

"Well, Hinata's gone, too. You lost twice, now, Kiba."

"Shut up."

She laughs and takes aim.


	3. Chapter 3

Outside the bar, people smoke and chat. The sidewalk is calmer than the inside, and the air at night is chilly enough to shake the input from people's heads and let them think clearly. The mood is lighter and more relaxed and Hinata and Naruto stand together away from the people, leaning against a brick wall with vines that tumble down from the top.

The just stand in a comfortable quiet together, watching the other people chat and smoke, and the other bars and shops across the street with their windows all lit up and the people inside and the neon signs and things.

Taking a sip from his drink, he laughs.

"Hmm?"

"Well," he says, "It's just I don't think we're supposed to take drinks outside. But, the bouncer didn't care."

"Yeah," she says, knowing it's because it's him, the war hero, and her, the Hyuuga princess.

"Well, whatever though, I like it," he says, taking another drink. She watches him, then looks at her reflection in her glass, then she drinks it.

"Hinata, are you okay, today?"

"Yeah."

"You're just always watching things, like you're thinking about stuff."

"Well. It's just, I don't know. We're not kids anymore."

"Nope."

"And I don't know what that means."

He is quiet and doesn't take another sip. A scent of cigarette blows their way.

"I always watch, though," she says, "I-I spent so long watching _you_ and so now, I guess I'm just used to watching and, I don't know."

"Now that you have me, you don't need to watch me? So, you watch other things?"

"I don't know."

"I li-love you, you know," he says, his face burning. She looks over to him and tries not to laugh.

"Me too, I love you too," she says, watching him. He laughs, she does too. They both sip their drinks and watch the other people who chat and smoke.

"Should I- should I only watch you?"

"What?" he asks, surprised, "I mean, man, you can watch whatever you want, you know?"

She nods.

"I don't want to hold you back."

"You couldn't."

"But, I don't want you to - I mean, I'm afraid you'll change, too."

She doesn't say anything.

"I'm afraid of a lot of stuff, I guess."

"If I change," she starts, "Well, I _will_ change because I'm always changing. You too. We're getting older. We'll change. But, I think because we're together, we'll also change together."

"I hope so."

"Me too."

"Do you, well, do you want to go back to my place?"

She nods and takes his hand. They leave their drinks on top of the wall.


	4. Chapter 4

"Foul. I call foul," Kiba says, crossing his arms like an X.

"No such thing," Tenten responds, smirking.

"You can't win like that."

"I did, though. I won like that."

"Nope."

"Yep. I bought a ticket."

"Huh?"

"I bought a ticket for the train to Comeback City, and I beat you there," she says before sputtering into laughter.

"What the hell? That was lame. Let's go again."

"Your doom," she says, pulling out quarters.

"Christ."

She laughs.

"I'll beat you this time," he tells her.

"Sure."

"I will. It's a promise."

She laughs again.

"Am I your rival, now?"

"Naruto will always be my rival. But, in pool, sure, yeah you're my pool rival."

She laughs as she presses the little button and the balls release, dropping into the hold.

"Hey, after this game, you wanna…"

"I only like girls, dude."

"What?!"

She laughs again, "You can break, citizen."

"Fuckin' A," he says as he chalks the cue.


	5. Chapter 5

After work, Sakura hangs up her white coat and leaves the hospital, saying goodbye to the nurses on the way out. It's already night and the streets are lit by street-lamps. As she makes her way towards the lower avenues, she hears the sounds of people and the streets become heavy with young people out for the night. She walks briskly, hands in her pockets, wishing she hadn't promised to meet them at the bar for a drink after work. She just wants to go home and take a bath and drink a glass of red wine and read a book. It seems so alluring to just ditch without telling anyone, to let them wonder about her as they get more and more drunk. She might turn off her phone, too, and just sit in the bath and light candles around the rim of the tub.

"Well, no," she says, walking quicker. Her clothing smells like the hospital and her hair is hastily brushed and clipped to the side. As she walks, she hears conversations in passing and the cadence of them annoys her, the way drunk people talk, sometimes someone shouts out to her and she even hears a catcall and walks faster, tightening her fist in her pocket.

In time, she finally reaches the bar and stops outside, noticing two drinks sat on the top of a brick wall next to the bar. She stares at them and doesn't think about anything. Then, she sighs and pushes through the door, showing her id to the bouncer.

The inside is packed with people, the bar-top is full up with all the stools taken. Across the way, she sees her friends at the furthest pool table, lit by the glowing light of the lamp above the table. Ino, Sai, Tenten, Kiba; she sees them laughing and talking, stopping to shoot followed by a chorus of cheering and tossed glances and pumped fists and sipped drinks. Sai is the most still, standing stiffly amidst it all, holding his drink and sometimes holding Ino's drink. He smiles, though and laughs and when he shoots he takes careful aim and seems to block out all the input. Ino is more exuberant than him, flashier and she is only rivaled by Kiba for who shouts the loudest when someone misses or makes it. Kiba drinks the most, over there. Then, Tenten stands and watches and then shoots and grins and laughs and slaps Kiba's back and pumper he fist. She is sort of contained, in some ways, as though she restrains herself comfortable, neither too quiet nor too loud.

"Hey, girl," some guy says, approaching her. Without even looking at him she raises a hand and says, "Don't even try," before walking away and hearing him laugh as she slips into the crowd and makes her way to the bar.

The bar-top is full so she has to lean between people to order, but the bartender notices her quick and pours her drink first. She is a girl and so she is good for business. Some part of her flinches as he hands her the whskey-sour, feeling like she is some sort of advertisement of commodity, and some other part of her is just glad to get out of there fast before anybody else hits on her. She hears someone say something to her as she leaves, quickly winding around the dance floor and through the crowded tables.

"Sakura!" Ino shouts, noticing her first. Sakura nods and joins them, takes a sip of her drink, realizes it's too strong.

"Hey, girl," Sai says, smiling. Sakura looks at him and raises an eyebrow.

"Hey," she says back as Ino laughs.

"I taught him that! I taught him to say that!"

"Oh-kay."

Sai just smiles and leans into his girlfriend who rubs his back.

"Sakura," Tenten says after finishing her shot and dropping two balls in the pockets, "Welcome to my domain."

She laughs and says, "Okay, I feel so honored."

Tenten laughs too, and Kiba grumbles from the back.

"I'm winning, this time."

"It's doubles, dude," Tenten says back.

"Still winning."

"Aight, then," she says, "Sakura, you want to play? You can take my spot."

"No, she can't," Kiba says, stopping his measuring of his shot.

"What the hell, dude," Ino says. Her face is bright pink from the drinking.

"Well-" he starts.

"It's fine. I'm just going to have one drink and go," Sakura says. Ino groans and strides over, grabbing her shoulders.

"Sakuraaaa," she says, "Forehead, c'mon, we never hang out anymore."

"I'm just busy," she says, letting Ino nuzzle her head into her shoulder.

"You're so hard-working. Did anyone die today?"

"An old man in room 534," Sakura responds after taking a sip of her drink, "I wasn't there, though. He died sometime in the afternoon. His nurse went in to change his bedding and found him."

"Old age?"

"Yeah. He was in after a stroke. It was just time."

"Hmmmm, sad," Ino says, raising her head from Sakura's shoulder to watch Sai shoot.

"Yeah. It happens."


	6. Chapter 6

By last call, only Sakura is still there along with the other stragglers from other friends groups. Ino and Sai left just moments prior without finishing their last drinks. Kiba disappeared at some point. And, Tenten met some girl and left them all there.

As the other stragglers drift towards the bar to order their final drinks, Sakura lingers near the door and then slips out, cutting through the crowds of people smoking and talking outside, and walks quickly down the ever-wavering street. The world is blurry, now. The street-lamps seem to bend in odd directions. The signs of stores and bars seem so bright, and the sidewalk seems to wiggle under her feet. As she walks, she looks at all the ginkgo trees and the dark tenements, and she quickens her pace with her hands balled up in her pockets.

Her phone dings and she ignores it.

As she walks, her head starts to clear up. She stumbles less and tries to keep a straight line. She avoids the eyes of people she passes, and at some point she breaks into a jog as she passes under a bridge and when she emerges on the other side, her head is messy and drunk again so she stops under a streetlamp and leans agains the pole. Her brain seems to pulsate and she hears some odd ringing noise and the leaves of trees seem to blend into massless shapes.

"Fucking Ino," she mutters, pushing herself off the street-lamp. She imagines getting home, drinking a glass of water, lying in bed, falling asleep.

Instead, she takes a detour towards the hospital. As she walks, the streets become more empty and darker and the lights of the hospital begin to emerge past the apartments. All the windows are lit, always, and she finds some comfort in that.

As she passes through the front door, she nods to the security officer sat at the desk, and she passes through a waiting area with a few people waiting for the night staff to call them in. A nurse behind a desk greets her and Sakura greets her back and keeps going. As she goes through the hallways, she glances into rooms and sees sick people, injured people, old people, lying asleep in their white beds. She takes another detour, passing the locker rooms and rides the elevator up to the fifth floor and walks the halls, stopping in front of room 534. Looking inside, she sees it's empty except for the bed and the little desk and a chair and the quiet monitors.

"Man," she says, shaking her head, exhaling.

When she finally gets to her apartment building, someone is standing under the porch-light. She recognizes his shape and her heart leaps, her pulse quickens, she stops and watches him. He nods at her and she approaches, he steps down off the porch and goes to her.

"I texted you," he says.

"I, uh, I didn't bother to check it. Sorry."

"Are you drunk?"

She nods her head and he touches her chin and she bites at his finger playfully.

"I should come back tomorrow, then. I'm leaving soon, though, before Monday."

"No, it's fine," she tells him, taking his hand.

"Well."

"It's fine. You don't really have anywhere else to stay."

He doesn't say anything as she kisses him. She is drunk and slobbers a bit, but he pulls her in by the waist anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

"Did you learn your lesson?"

"Probably not, I'll admit that."

"You should learn. Here, I'll explain the reason-"

"Dude, c'mon. Lemme just drink my coffee, it's still early..."

Shino does not respond. They are sat together at a small table in the corner of Cafe Caffo, a small coffee shop in northeast Konoha. Shino sits quietly, wearing his sunglasses and his hood, staring straight at Kiba who avoids his gaze by looking first out the window a the people passing by, then around the shop. The shop is quiet this morning. There is a retired shinobi at a corner table, reading the newspaper, drinking a whole pot of tea, with a half-eaten bagel on the plate in front of him. There are two genin kunoichi sat together near the door. They chat amiably and use their hands a lot when they speak, both of them drink chais and one of them brought a book which sits on the edge of the table. There are two people on staff this morning, as they chat about their weekends, one of them wipes the counter down with a cloth while the other prepares a new batch of coffee.

The cafe is quiet and the morninglight hangs in the windows and lies across the table-tops and the wooden floor as if it fell there. There is the tinking sound of a cup being set on a plate, there is the sound of a newspaper page turning, the sound of two girls chatting, and the sound of the coffee machine coming to boil. The place smells like coffee and teas and when the door opens the little bell chimes and a gust of wind blows in and there is a new et of sounds as a customer steps in and looks about before approaching the register. It is not until he orders that Kiba recognizes the man as a chunin he was stationed with in the war.

Kiba just watches as the chunin leans against the counter and kicks at the floor once to put his fake-leg back into place. The girls stop talking when he kicks and they watch him too before continuing on in lower voices. The man turns to look at them, some grimace on his face, a speck of shame in his eyes. Then, he notices Kiba across the way and he nods, Kiba nods back and takes another sip of cofeee. The man puts two dollars into the tip jar as the girl behind the counter hands him his tea and his pastry wrapped in foil. He nods and thanks her and she thanks him and he hobbles his way to the far side of the cafe and sits down on a bench to begin, his back turned to Kiba.

"Do you know him?" Shino asks.

"Ah, yeah. That's right, you were in a different squad."

"I see."

"Yeah, I know him."

Then, they are quiet and Kiba stares out the window and takes sips of his coffee. His eyesight is clearing up but they are still bloodshot and his heads still pounds and his lungs still feel clenched.

"Where is Akamaru?"

"Still with Hana. He just needs some time, she said. How's teaching school going? What's it called? Not teaching school…"

"Teaching school is well."

"No, what's it called?"

"Konoha Sensei Program."

"Right. Yeah."

"Ebisu-sensei is the teacher. He is good. I am the student, along with several others. Not all of us will pass and teach at the academy. But most of us will receive out teaching licenses and so we will be able to take on pupils. All the new Jonins go through there, too. I have one in my class."

"Who?"

"Shikamaru."

"Really?"

"Yes. He is second only to me."

"No way, I don't believe you."

"Well. He has several other responsibilities as well."

"Yeah, he and Sakura work harder than anyone else in our class, now…. Well, what do you have?"

"Aburame Clan. We are desperate after the war. We lost so many."

"Immobile fighters in general had a hard time."

"Yes."

"You're going to be clan head, then, huh?"

"I don't know. We do not have a lineage system like the other noble clans. We shall see."

"There's no one else, though."

"True."

"Well, you'll be fine."

"You too."

"What?"

"You will be fine, too."

"I don't understand, dude."

"Hmmm, you'll be fine."


	8. Chapter 8

When she kisses him he pulls her in, against his body, and she feels small there. She presses her face into his clavicle and listens the the murmurs of his body, the odd creak of a bone, the texture of his skin. Then, there is warmth, too, it permeates the air around them, it inhabits their bodies, a bodily warmth, a shared warmth. They exist in it and sometimes one of them will laugh or make a calm noise, like a sigh, and the other will adjust their body or pull a little closer.

It's afternoon. They make love anyway. The curtains are open, but they're on the top floor. The sunlight shines across their bodies and she notices how drowsy it seems lying there like that, across the windowsill, across the carpet, across his back. Then, she breathes in and stops noticing anything at all.


	9. Chapter 9

The smoke curls from the glowing, orange tip and loses itself in the little winds. Shikamaru watches the tiny fire work it's way down the tube, biting the bits of paper and tobacco in order, in single file, like it's giving some sort of long speech. Before it reaches the filter, he drops the butt onto the grave-stone, the ashes kicks out across the white marble, the ember-tip rolls out, still glowing and burning. He wants to leave it there but people who don't understand will think someone desecrated the grave. So, he waits for the ember to die before picking the butt up and wiping the ash away, clearing the grave white again.


	10. Chapter 10

The little clack of the clipboard as she lets go of the lever and the metal jaw clamps down on the sheet of paper. The sound of a telephone ringing two and a half times before a nurse picks it up and talks in a quiet, sweet voice. The noise a gurney makes as it's wheeled down the hall, the tired wheels squeaking as it turns a corner. The sound of doorknobs turning, doors opening and closing, the soft step of comfortable shoes, of papers rustling, of fabric moving. The hum of monitors and the consistent beeps of the line. Televisions turning on, heard through doorways and walls, the channels flicking through, pausing on the news, then a movie, then a cartoon. The sounds are all different. The news sound is drawlish and tepid. The movie sound is often quiet, slow, then bursting and musical as the action starts, actor talk, deliver their lines without the mumbling way of the average person. Then, the cartoons have strange sounds, and the voices are strange too, cartoonish, she realizes, and laughs. Her laughs tumble, it's breathy, it's short. Then, she walks on through the hallway, reading through the paper on her clipboard.


	11. Chapter 11

"I've got a mission tomorrow."

"Hmm, okay."

"Sorry."

"Let's just stay in, then."

"We can go out."

"I don't want to go out. Do you?"

She shakes her head.

"Then let's just get takeout, or something, is that fine?"

"We can go to Ichiraku."

"Well, that's going out, though."

"It's fine if we go out."

"Is it?"

She nods her head.

"Are you sure it's fine, you've got a mission tomorrow. Well, if it's fine then lets go to Ichiraku."

"Okay," she says, standing up and pulling her hair back.


	12. Chapter 12

They pass down the crowded street and stop at the familiar orange glow emitting from past the cloth banners. They can see most stools are taken, except for one available near the middle of the bench.

The sidewalk is lit by the orange slat of lantern-light. People walk by in great swaths, a large crowd for a Thursday night. The chatter is immense, the little lights of cell phones, the odd sounds of a single shout of laughter or some window slamming shut. Hinata and Naruto linger near a power-pole as they wait for another stool to open. But, there is a group ahead of them, talking amiably with their hands, waiting for a few more stools to open up. The people are in their twenties, one of them wears glasses, the others don't. They are shinobi, too, but Hinata can tell they never fought in the war. They must've been Genin at the time.

"Mahhhh," Naruto sighs, hands in his hoodie pocket, looking at the group of three ahead of them, "We might not get a seat. Maybe we should just go back home, what do you think?"

"Well…" she starts, only to be interrupted by a gleeful shout. They both turn to look and see Kiba cutting through the swaths of pedestrians, hand raised, cheeks flushed, some glint in his eyes.

"Yo, Kiba!" Naruto calls, raising a hand. Kiba slaps it with his own and Naruto raises an eyebrow and laughs once.

"Hey, what's goin' on," Kiba asks, swaying a bit. Hinata and Naruto share a glance.

"Just thinking about going, um, waiting for a stool to open up," Hinata answers. Naruto glances at her.

"Yah, I'm amazed they haven't expanded yet, for more seating. But, the ossan likes it the way it is, I guess. Says it's contemporary and traditional all at once, I don't much understand, though."

"Contemporary _and_ traditional!" Kiba exclaims, making his voice into a sort of cartoon, "Well, if that's his nindo."

They all laugh and one of the people waiting in front of them touches Hinata's shoulder.

"Huh?" she yelps, half-jumping over into Naruto and concurrently cursing herself for not being more aware. Two years of peace has done something.

"Hey…" Naruto starts, and Kiba gives some slanted frown. The guy hesitates, some wild fear in his eyes.

"Oh! S-sorry, I just wanted to say there's two more stools open, now, if you three want it."

"Oh," Hinata says quietly, looking over to Naruto whose still frowning. When they make eye contact, he breaks into a half-contrived grin and thanks the man who asks to shake his hand. Hinata and Kiba take two of the stools while Naruto and the group exchange pleasantries.

Sitting down at the ramen stand, Hinata immediately becomes wary of the cloths draped behind her head and back and how people passing by can see her lower half sat on the stool but she has no peripheral vision to see them.

"Sorry, Hinata, shoulda noticed that guy there, I guess I'm not a great shinobi today," Kiba says. In some way, he is right because he was the only one with direct vision. In the field, he'd have noticed somebody reaching towards his teammate, but here and drunk, in a time of rising peace, he maybe have lost something.

"It's okay. It's peaceful here."

"Nah, you're the Heir of the Hyuuga. I should be more watchful," he mutters, but Hinata knows what he's really saying. She wants to rub his back but decides not to, thinking Naruto probably wouldn't approve. When they were teammates, spending weeks together with Shino and their sensei out in the field, in forests and strange cities, it was not unusual to platonically rub each-other's back or to rest a head on a shoulder. There was a need for it, even, a common need among soldiers for physical intimacy. But now, it's different. Hinata is a Tokubetsu Jonin, now, and usually does work within Konoha itself, often directly for the Hokage or for her clan. As the city grows, she is becoming an iportant political figure, both as a highly ranked shinobi and as a member of the Hyuuga's main branch. Sometimes, she still goes on field missions, but those, like the one for tomorrow morning, are usually diplomatic in nature. She, like her fiancé, has a way of speaking that inspires people. She believes in the goodness of people, and somehow the shinobi world wants to believe in the same thing.

Kiba is also a Tokubetsu Jonin now, and mostly goes on field missions as opposed to diplomatic ones. Or, he would, if times weren't so peaceful and if Akamaru weren't so sick and if he, himself, weren't so busy trying to forget the things that happened. The war still inhabits them all, and just when things were getting a little better, just as the mandatory therapy sessions were paying off, the moon started to fall. He is often in the village, now, exploring the expanding city. His sister works at the hospital, leading the ninken section. His mother retired after the war, where her faithful ninken died in the final battles. She herself suffered an amputated arm and spends her time working with local kunoichi groups and promoting Konoha's pet fostering program. She fosters all sports of animals displaced from the war, not just dogs. For a goo few months, she even had a goat roaming about the Inuzuka house situated just at the former edge of the city, but now, as the city expands, she finds herself with many neighbors. The family in total, however, has split out from their home where they grew up, a big house with a a lot of field space for all the dogs, along with a big mortgage because their mother never did make the money a full jonin makes. They don't need to pay off the mortgage anymore only because Hinata arranged for the Hyuuga to purchase it. Meanwhile, Hana has moved deeper into the city, nearer the hospital, into a nice apartment that allows dogs. Kiba, too, moved into the city, close to downtown. His apartment is sort of ragged, but it works fine. He visits his mother generally every other day, but doesn't; see Hana as much because she's so busy.

Watching Kiba stare at his hands, Hinata clears her throat and orders two large miso ramen with extra toppings of naruto. Ayame smiles and writes the order, pinning it up to the spoke in the back and dings the little bell before rushing to the next customer. Normally, she would talk with her, but it's busy tonight.

"Kiba," Hinata says, he looks up.

"Huh, shit, did I miss my chance to order?"

"I just got you what I got, hope thats okay."

"Ah, sure, thanks."

"Kiba," she says, and he looks at her then looks away, "One day, I think the war will leave us, you know, right now it still sits in our bodies like something metallic, but I think one day it will eave us. Okay?"

"Ahhh, well," he says rubbing the back of his neck, remembering that they used to talk about the war all the time, before the falling moon incident. Back then, everyone talked about the war. All their friends talked about it with each-other. They'd meet up in safe places, in apartments and basements and talk about it. The tone would change when they'd start talking about it. They's sit in circles and talk earnestly. Jokes were fine, but they couldn't be hurtful jokes, they couldn't be jokes meant to dim another's light. Then, before that, just after the war ended, nobody talked about it. They hung out,, but they went to beaches and to hot springs and played around. They were like children again, for a few months, before one day Sakura wrote that grant for the children's mental hospital. The psychological affects of war became a common conversation. And, within the year, the therapy sessions began. Then, even before the way, they all talked together. After Pain's invasion, they'd meet up as a group, hidden in the stacks of lumber, and they'd decide what to do, now. After the invasion, Konoah fragmented, people formed coalitions, took sides. Their group rallied around Naruto and decided to take responsibility for Sasuke. In a way, they were a political organization, a group of young, civic minded Shinobi. It's always been like that, in some ways, too. They were the Konoha 12, the Rookie 9, classmates at the Academy. Of course, of course they were allowed to still talk like this.

"Yeah," he says, "It's just, the war was different from the fighting we did as kids."

"Yeah," she agrees. It's a line they'd all said before, several times.

"Yo!" Naruto shouts, pulling back the curtain and taking a seat on the other side of Hinata, "Yo, Ayame."

"Hey, Naruto!" she calls from behind her back, pulling two large miso ramen with extra naruto out from the back counter.

"Hinata, did you order for me already?" he asks, eyeing the bowls, their usual.

"Well-"

"Kiba! You order yet?" Naruto asks, leaning around his fiancé.

"Hmm? Oh, um, Ayame, could I have the same as them?"

"Of course! Another large miso ramen with extra naruto."

"Hah," he laughs. Naruto grins and leans back.

"It's Ayam-ay, by the way, Kiba, not Ayam-ah!"

"It's fine either way!" she claims, setting the bowls down in front of Hinata and Naruto.

"Well, where's Teuchi, anyway?"

"He's out to buy more chives, we just ran out."


	13. Chapter 13

"Huh, Sasuke was back in town?!"

"Just for last weekend. Didn't he text you?"

"No! The bastard."

Sakura laughs and looks away grinning, holding her elbows. Her drink sits on the bar-top, condensation glistening along the bottom. The drink is a sharp auburn color, with ice melting quickly inside, and a little plastic straw leaned against the inside rim. It sits on a paper napkin, and Sakura sits on the bar-stool with the little back that swivels, she sits facing Naruto, with her legs crossed, hugging her elbows and looking off towards the door. She feels a sort of satisfaction in being able to look away from her drink. The bar is mostly empty, the bartender is chatting with a couple down at the other end. There is a small group playing pool in the corner. And another few people sat at a small table.

Naruto frowns at her and looks down at his drink. It's a dark beer and the foam clings to the glass as he takes another sip.

"Where's Hinata?" she asks, looking back over to him.

"Taking Kiba home," he responds, setting down his drink and leaning his cheek against his fist, his elbow propped on the bar-top, Sakura almost laughs because it looks like he's punching himself, but he doesn't notice.

"Is he okay?"

"Just dealing with war stuff, I guess."

"Tell her to send him over to me, at the hospital. Or, no, I'll just call him."

"I thought it was just for children's mental stuff?"

"We're accepting war veterans if they really need it, now. And, of course, _any_ cases where people are low functioning, can't take care of themselves, you know."

"Kiba can take care of himself."

"Yes. But, he's a friend. And, besides," she continues, taking a sip from her drink in order to ignore the possible ethical considerations of vague nepotism, "Besides, we also want to _prevent_ people from becoming low-functioning. He's a war veteran, too, so there's grants and things in place for that."

"You know, I sorta miss the old basement sessions."

"Me too."

"Yeah," he says, sipping his beer. The taste of it tightens up his taste-buds and he lets the rim of the glass lean against his lower lip, some look of discontent inhabiting his face. He stares out at the bottles lined up on the shelves behind the bar.

"Hinata has a mission tomorrow, doesn't she? I heard she's going to the old capitol as a Hyuuga representative."

"Well, yeah."

"How long will she be gone, do you know?"

"Not really. I guess it's a lot of work to move a whole capitol."

"They're not _moving_ it."

"Well, not the buildings, but still."

"Yeah, their just declaring Konoha the new capitol of the Fire Country. But yeah, it's a lot of work to do that. Shikamaru's been complaining about it. And, at the hospital, we're just bracing ourselves for a huge rush of immigrants. I wish we could build a second hospital, but there's just not enough funds, or even enough medical-nin. Kakashi-sensei's floundering on how to do all this, money-wise, people-wise, so many were lost in the war. And now, Shinobi just don't go on as many missions anymore, we can't support ourselves like that, now. He's been in talk with some corporate leaders, too, you know, like the mine owners from down south."

"Hope it works out," is all Naruto can think to say as he takes another sip.

"That's it? Listen, you, you're going to be Hokage one day, so you have to take more interest in this stuff. I'm sure you'll be giving speeches to execs pretty soon, anyway."

"Ah, I don't know."

"What, you'd rather talk to warlords?" she asks, smirking. He glances over and chuckles.

"I guess so. Their minds are easier to change than corporate heads, I think."

Sakura laughs, "Probably true."

"Nagato, Obito, they understood it all, you know, the war, the cycle of hatred. Really, they were just aiming for what we're aiming for, too. Even Zabuza."

"Well, they went about it wrong."

"Definitely. But there's something about being a Shinobi, I don't mean, like, the code of honor, nindo, or anything, I mean fighting, killing. Being a child with kunai and shuriken, jutsus that can kill. Growing up like that. Only people who know what that means know what that means, I guess, and the people who don't know what that means can't understand us, even on a surface level, I think. I could talk to Nagato because I knew what he meant, I understood him, I hated him but I understood the bones of him, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you're saying."

"And, Obito, too. What it means to sacrifice, to die and come back, to be manipulated. Gaara. Sasuke. You, you get it, too. But, those other people, the former feudal lords, the corporate leaders, even just the people moving in now, all those migrants and, well, in a way even all those genin who stayed home during the war, even they don't really understand it."

"Just because they don't understand, does that mean you can't convince them? You can 'talk no jutsu' them?"

"Well. I think it's probably harder to talk openly with a citizen than it is to talk openly with, say, Uchiha Madara. There's just too much the average person doesn't understand."

"Okay."

"I don't know how Kakashi-sensei does it, though, honestly."

"He's always been that way. It's not that he relates to people, it's just that he stays quiet, I think, let's them speak. You're better at listening than you used to be, for sure, I think Hinata teaches you that. But, still, maybe it's like you said, maybe it's easier to listen to a shinobi than anyone else. But, most shinobi aren't like you, that's the problem, I think. Most shinobi are like Sai, or Kakashi-sensei, or Shino, or Sasuke; we tend to keep quiet and silent all the time."

"Yeah. That's true."

"It's just the weird ones who makes loud and obnoxious declarations on the battlefield, you know," she teases, taking another drink.

"Hah, Then you're weird, too… Shanar-oooo.." He says, his voice trailing away. She laughs and hits his shoulder. He flinches and takes another drink.

Then, they are quiet again, sipping their drinks. The bartender passes by and asks if they want another, they both say yes. When he hands them their refilled glasses, they glance at each-other and clink rims before taking the first sips.

Then, Naruto's phone dings. Pulling it out, he sees a text from Hinata.

Are you still at the bar?

Yeah, how's Kiba doing?

He's fine, I think, for now. I have to go back to the Hyuuga compound though, to discuss tomorrow's mission with father and the others.

Oh, okay. Are you staying the night there?

Yes

Let's meet up before you head over.

Okay, I'll meet you at the bar. The one on Flint?

Yeah. I can leave tho

It's fine, I'll be there soon

Okay.


	14. Chapter 14

The bar is dim and hot when Hinata arrives. People stand around tables and the bar-top, shouting, chatting, gossiping, and drinking. All the girls hold drinks in their hands. As she hands her id to the bouncer, she avoids his eyes but notices him eyeing her chest. All she can do is stand there and take it as she peers above people's heads. In the back, at the same pool table from before, she spots Naruto grinning, holding a beer, and letting out a laugh. Sakura stand off to the side of the table, holding a pool cue, while Tenten leans back up from taking a shot, pumping her fist. As the bouncer hands back her id, she feels some dwelling warmth, an idea of community and safety in the sight of her friends. She walks quickly through the crowd, avoiding men who glance at her and open their mouth to speak to her.

"Hinata!" Naruto shouts as she appears at their table. Behind her, several men at another table watch her pass, some lusy mist in their eyes. Naruto scowls at them and so she goes up to him and kisses his cheek, letting him wrap his arm around her waist. She presses herself into him as she watches Sakura take her shot. The ball clacks and rolls lazily across the green velvet before stopping just at the edge of a net.

"Damnit!" she swears, looking away, "Hey Hinata, how's Kiba doing?"

"He's - okay, now."

"Tell him I'll get in contact with him."

"Sure."

"Hinata," Tenten says, "You can be on Naruto's team, now. Sakura, you're on mine."

"Okay," Sakura says, Hinata nods, Naruto grins and sips his beer.

"You want anything to drink?" he asks.

She shakes her head then says "No."

"You're shot, Naruto, or, Hinata's shot, whichever," Tenten says, handing Hinata the cue. Taking it, she leaves Naruto's side and prowls the edge of the table, analyzing the geometrics. She is a Hyuuga, after all, and although there is no pool table at the compound, she has been trained rigorously in ascertaining the physics of anything with just her eyes. And too, she has been trained in grace of the body, in the ebb and flow of movement. She both can tell how an object will react to being hit by another object and how hard to hit said object to get the reaction she wants. In truth, all ninja are trained in this, it's part of their dexterity. But ninja like the Hyuuga and like Tenten, a weapons expert, are particularly in tune with the physics of things. The same goes for Anbu.

"Hinata's better at this than she seems," Naruto loudly brags, making her blush slightly and smile. Sakura scoffs playfully and takes a sip of her drink while Tenten crosses her arms and looks on, eye flicking back and forth across the table.

Hinata bends down to shoot, she takes careful aim, and waits, lingering, and then pulls back almost lazily and shoots. Two balls go in. Naruto applauds, Sakura does too, Tenten sighs and smiles sadly, uncrossing her arms.

"Told you!"

"Wow, Hinata!"

"Wait!" Tenten says, holding up her hands. After a pauses eh points to the table and says, "You guys are stripes, not solids. Sorry, Hinata."

"What!?" Naruto exclaims, spilling a bit of beer, "Wait, wait, wait. When we mixed the teams up we never decided on that!"

"Wellll, I was already solids, remember? Then, Sakura joined my team and Hinata joined _your_ team."

There is a lingering quiet, and naruto sighs, giving in. Hinata goes over to him and pats his back.

"Sorry," she says, "I should've noticed."

"Well, I didn't notice either, so…"

Taking the cue, Sakura strides up to the table and begins measuring while Tenten points out little things to her, like where to hit the white ball, which pocket to aim for. Naruto and Hinata recede towards a small, but tall table and he sets his drink on it. She picks it up and takes a sip, then sets it back down.

"Citrus," she says.

"Yeah, They said it's an imported beer, from the Wave Country, I think it was."

"Neat, do you like it? It's a little sweet."

"Yeah, it's a little too sweet."

"Reminds me of when my family would go to the mangrove forest, you know which, the one down south?"

"Yeah, what's it called, again?"

"I don't remember the name, but it's owned by a friend of father's."

"Oh! Mr. Horimoto?"

"Yeah!"

"He's super rich, wow. I heard he's working with Kakashi-sensei on expanding the Konoha."

"Yeah, I'm to meet him in the old capitol in three days."

"Your mission, then."

"Yeah."

"What were you saying?"

"Huh?"

"About the mangrove forest?"

"Oh, right! Yes, he owns that whole forest south of his villa. And, when we were kids, father would take Hanabi and I there every late autumn and we would get to ride around with the servants and pick the mandarins."

"What, like, you'd do the child labor work?"

"No, no, the servants were really nice. We rode around in a little carriage driven by his butler, who, by the way, is a shinobi. We'd ride with him and he'd let us eat any mandarins we picked."

"So, you like the beer, then?"

"Well, it's a nice memory. But now that I'm older I just think about the orange pickers we'd see in the forest. They looked so - old, even the kids."

"Serfs."

"Or migrant workers."

"Basically serfs."

"Basically."

Then, there is a quiet between them as Hinata takes another sip of the beer. As she lowers it from her lips, she stares down into the surface of the liquid, the bits of foam sliding down the inside rim, and the little bubbles on top.

"Things are changing, now," she says. Naruto nods and feels some twist in his gut. He should've been the one to say that. She should've been the one to nod.

"Hinata," he starts, and she looks up, hands him the beer, he takes it and looks at it and sets it on the table, trying to think of what to say next. Should he ask about Kiba? About her mission? About her?

"The mangrove forest is a beautiful place, Naruto, I wish you could come with."

"I've heard. It survived the war, then?"

"Parts were destroyed, I heard. Burned down. But there weren't any real battle there, just some small scuffles between low level shinobi escorting citizens away, to the east, and mercenaries hired by Akatsuki to disrupt it. Koji, um - Horimoto's butler, was injured in the fighting."

"How strong is he, Koji?"

"Um, maybe high chunin level, I guess. He's a powerful leader. Horimoto has his own squad of shinobi led by Koji. So, he's strong enough to lead them."

"Okay."

"Naruto!" Tenten calls, "Take your damn shot already!"

They both turn to see Sakura and Tenten waiting by the table. Naruto glances at Hinata and then glides over, grabbing the cue from Sakura, and then bends over to measure. Hinata watches him and takes another sip of his beer.


	15. Chapter 15

"So," Shikamaru mutters, putting his hands in his pockets, "She's off then, on her mission. Should be a good week or so before she returns, maybe more."

"How do you know?" Naruto asks, some bite in his voice. His friend watches him long enough to make him feel self-conscious before responding.

"Well, I've been on missions like that. Takes two days to get to the old capitol. Would take far less if it weren't for the genin going with, though."

"Yeah, takes what, three days to get to the Sand…"

"For a team of four, yes."

"Takes me like, what, an hour to cross the country…."

"That's you, Naruto, and you know that's only if you're in Chakra Mode."

"Yeah…"

"Well, like I was saying. Two days to get there. Then maybe another day or two just commiserating. Half a day to get to the mangrove forest and meet Horimoto. Then, spend the night, maybe even a full day there. After which they'll have to travel to the mines-"

"By train."

"By train. Another day, basically, in travel. Then, the rest of a few days at the mines."

"Aren't they meeting here, though?"

"They are, but they're going to have to wait at the mines for awhile, I heard."

"Why?"

"Because the rails aren't finished. They're going to ride the first train that runs all the way into Konoha. But yeah, then they come here"

"I thought that train was just boxcars, like, lumber and stuff?"

"Lumber and concrete wash along with other materials, yes. They're adding a special car or two for delegates. It's ceremonial. After that, they're meeting at the Hokage Mansion for several days of meetings. I'll be there, too. After those are done, then you'll see her again."

"What, all that so Hinata can ride a fucking train home?"

"Well, the Hyuuga have to keep up relations with Horimoto and the leaders of the old capitol, anyway. It's a lot of social etiquette stuff you don't understand cause you're you."

"Do you do that kinda stuff too? Wait, what is it all anyway?"

"Ballrooms, dinners, maybe a night at a theater. That kind of thing. Deals between rich leaders are done with wine and turkey and silverware. Deals with shinobi are done in backrooms, alleyways. You wouldn't understand."

"Godamnit. Have you done that stuff, too?"

"Sure. I just got back from a thing at the Sand Country border. I met with dignitaries, Temari, Gaara, Konkuro, some others. A noble clan lives right at the border, you know. They hosted it."

"Wow."

"All ambassadors do that."

"Not me."

"You're not an ambassador, Naruto. Well, people want to meet you, though. You'll be called in when they finally get here."

"Man," he says, kicking at a clump of dirt. The clump breaks apart, crumbling against his shoe. Looking up, he notices the paint on the arching gate is peeling in several spots.

"Yeah," Shikamaru continues, they won't be entering from that gate, but we're gonna have to re-paint it anyway. A good D-Rank mission for some young genin, maybe with an older genin supervising."

"The train station isn't even in Konoha…." Naruto mutters, scowling.

"It _will_ be. Or, more accurately. It'll be in the Fire Capitol. Konoha will become just a sort of burrow, we could say. A district, maybe."

"I saw them building it, you know, the station. It's just sitting out there, past the Aburame forest, in, like a field. The delegates will have to walk all the way here, from there."

"True. But's it's not just a field, Naruto, they just put in the frames of the streets down there last week."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. The concrete plaster we're getting in will fill the first streets. The lumber will be the first powerlines and the frames of some of the new buildings."

"What will the Aburame do?"

"I don't know. Well, they don't have the same power they used to. They're money is dwindled, and, well, they always were the least rich of the old noble clans."

"Right, Hyuuga, then Akimichi. Uchiha?"

"Uchiha had the second most money, maybe tied with the Akimichi, but after the massacre almost all of it was claimed by the state. Well, most of it went to the police force, anyway, and it still mostly does. It's just that instead of the Uchiha controlling the flow of money into the police, its now the state that does."

"Sasuke was going to try and get it back."

"He didn't."

"He didn't?"

"No, didn't you know about that? He was here just last weekend to tell Kakashi he only wanted enough of his inheritance to secure a plot of land down on Haikyuu-Pink."

"What? Godamnit, did everyone see him but me?"

"Apparently."

"That idiot."

"Well, he's always been pretty quiet. Anyway, Naruto, I'm not sure what the Aburame are going to do. They don't have the same power they used to, the old systems are fading. They were respected for their nobility, their blue blood so to speak, and probably their relations with Iwa. But now, that doesn't matter so much. The Leaf has a good relationship with all the major countries, now, that doesn't rest within specific clans. And Kakashi has become Hokage, and he never cared about clan nobility in the first place. I don't know. He's trying to get the Aburame forest declared a national treasure, like a secure park, protected by the state, but there are corporate leaders who want to clear it out and build there. The location is prime, scenic, even, just above the monument and all."

"Shino won't stand for that."

"Shino is too quiet to do anything. Muta had a better chance, I think, or even Shikuro. But Muta is dead and Shikuro is ailing."

"Man."

"Gen died, too, after the war."

"Yeah. That was big news. Sakura said it got her thinking on shinobi mental health."

"Yeah. He always had it rough, though. His son, Torune, joined Root. And, during Konoha Crush, well, did you know he was twice the Anbu sensei?"

"What's that? The guy who teaches new anbu members all the, uh, anbu stuff?"

"Yeah. Twice he held that position. All but one of his entire first class of students died in Konoha Crush, burned to death by Pakura of the Scorch Release."

"Wow."

"And, most of his second class died in the war."

"Godamnit. Damnit."

"Another shinobi torn apart by Anbu, or, by what it mean to be Anbu. Kakashi's father was like that, too. Uchiha Itachi. Maybe even, well, maybe even Orochimaru and Danzo."

There is a long pause as they watch the long road out of town. The dirt seems to waver and fan out. There are no footprints or tire tracks on the road. Shinobi never take wagons or the new vehicles, and they are too quick to leave deep prints.

"What will the Aburame do….."

"Either Shino has to pick it up, or, well, the Sixth can't protect their forest all on his own. But, Shino's in my sensei program class that Ebisu's teaching. I'll just say he seems more interested in becoming a teacher than protecting his clan's interests. Which, well, that's fine, to me, I think that's even a noble ideal, he's moving with the times. But, I'm not sure his father appreciates that. Well, Shibi was never a strong leader anyway."

"What about the Nara forest?"

"That forest is fine because it's not in a good location. Plus, the Nara Clan has strong ties with the Akimichi who are well respected outside the ninja system. The Forest of Death will be torn up, though."

"What!?"

"Too dangerous for the new influx of citizens."

"Everything's changing…."

"It's good, Naruto. You know it's good."

"I know. We need to change, but we need to change in the right way."

"It'll be better than before. Your children, mine too, they won't have to fight like we did and like our parents did."

"Maybe. They'll lose something, though. They won't inherit something."

"Well, I think the Will of Fire will always pass on, regardless of what it means to be a shinobi."

"Hmmm," Naruto responds, watching the long road out of town.


	16. Chapter 16

As Naruto crosses the little bridge arching over Juniperleaf River, he stops to listen to the water slap against the stonework. The sound is consistent and surprisingly loud, it echoes faintly, and seems as though the river and the stonework is murmuring together, like some sor tof relationship. Leaning against the belgrade, he looks out across the water and watches the late afternoon sunlight skate along the surface, and how the juniper leaves bending over the water drop berries into the stream an the berries tumble down current.

"I can't even do, anything," he mutters, closing his eyes, lowering his head, and opening them again. Therea re his hands clasped over each-other. They are tough and grainy, worked, like the hands of a mineworker. When he turns them over, to see the palms, he sees the miles of calluses and a thick, white scar cutting across the right hand. The Kyuubi chakra heals, but it always leaves a scar. That's the trade-off.

Sighing, he look sup again and sees a person down-rover, a child with a fishing pole. The kid stands at the edge and casts the line, the lure glints in the sunlight and Naruto looks away, turning, and keeps walking, his footsteps dull against the stone, and he stops thinking entirely.

When he look sup again, he finds himself on flint street, as though he apparated there.

"Nope," he says, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand, but his eyes lingers on the brick wall full of vines where he and Hinata left their drinks almost two weeks ago.

"Okay," he says, and walks slowly towards the bar until the doorman spots him. Then, he picks up his speed. As he makes to pull out his id, the doorman shakes his head and raises a hand then sticks out his thumb and motions for him to come inside. Naruto nods and casts a thanks and steps in. The bar is almost empty, almost dreary. There is a man in front of the jukebox, dancing alone, swaying, raising his arms above his head and revealing sweat-stains on his work shirt. He sort of sway-dances, his face is sweaty, he seems to stumble at every moment. Nothing plays on the jukebox, the song just ended.

Naruto hesitates, then walks over to the bar-top.

"What'll you have?" the barman asks. He's a young guy, about Naruto's age, but with a more hip hairdo. IT's shaven all around the sides with a tuft of black curl up top. He wears thick glasses and a big ring on his middle finger.

"Uh, what's that citrus beer, again?"

"Summer Mandarin? This the one?"

"Yep, yeah, that's it, please."

"Coming right up," the man says, swinging himself over to the line of beertaps, flipping a glass out from the shelf and then that small pause while the beer flows into the glass. That little pause, it's always a fun sort of awkward pause. All the flair and movement prior to it, then just a small pause.

"Here you are, sir, on the house for you. Thank you for your service all these years."

"Oh! Thanks, uh…"

"Ururu Wakizashi, retired Genin."

"Uzumak-"

"I know who you are."

"Oh, uh, retired, already?"

"Well, retired from fighting. I never was any good at it. An uncle of mine started up this bar like ten years ago and I started working in the back when I didn't have missions. Always the D-Rank missions, you know, finding some ladies lost cat, mulching a garden, that sort of thing. IT was good work for the money, I guess. But I stayed Genin for a little too long and the Chunnins started assigning me more dangerous stuff, C Ranks stuff, you know. Hunting malicious tigers and boars, stealing items stolen by bandits, capturing non-shinobi criminals in a town down south, I had to do that, once. I went off with two other genin my age, and a chunin squad leader, down to this - musky, little town down south of the forests. We sat down there for a week before catching a serial donkey molester."

"Wow, donkeys, huh."

"Yeah, never saw it coming. Well, needless to say I took more work here, int he bar, as a kid, sweeping up peanut shells, that sort of thing. I was old enough to pretend to be old enough to serve liquor by then, too, hah!"

"Nice, so you stopped taking missions?"

"Yeah. Sometimes I'd take the D Rank ones, just to make extra money on the side, but in time I stopped even being offered anything."

"Nothing at all?"

"I like it that way, to be honest, I make enough money here, can't imagine cleaning out some old guys shed nowadays, you know?"

"Sure."

"Well, you're a war hero! So, you probably didn't have to do too much of that stuff."

"I had a mission once, when I was uh twelve, I think, to catch this rich ladies missing cat."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, it scratched me up good. Had another one to walk somebodies dog."

"What!? Seriously!?"

"Yep. And, I can't even count all the times I shoveled snow, or dug ditches for someone's garden, of did the mulch thing, or picked weeds. All that. We re-shingled a barnhouse, once."

"Huh, never woulda thought even Konoha's future Hokage would do all that, too."

"Well…"

"So, as Hokage, what're you gonna do about it?"

"Huh?"

"You gonna set in some child labor laws?"

"Well, I- I guess so. It builds character, though, I think. Better than the war."

"Better than the war… Better than the war, huh?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Well, whatever you say, Hokage."


	17. Chapter 17

"Well, it's not like I _remember_ what happened inside of Infinite Tsukoyomi, but it's as though my body still does, you know? Its like I changed somehow, if just a little, if just, well, I'm not being quiet articulate enough, maybe because I don't know what I'm trying to say, but it's like I found a sort of peace, inside me, after the Infinite Tsukoyomi, you know? Supposedly we all experienced a lifetime of happiness, or a lifetime of exactly what we wanted for my life. And yet, even the Yamanaka, even our mind reading corps and our anbu can't pull out even _one_ memory from a _lifetime's_ worth of memories. It never happened, I guess. But still, whatever didn't actually happen changed me, really, it did. And, it changed all of us. Every shinobi. No, every single person. Every. Single. Person. Not just anyone who glanced at the moon. And, shit, you know what, not even just the people. Cats, dogs, from what we could gather it seemed as though all _mammals_ experienced it. I don't know why it was specific to mammals, but there it is. The point is, we all felt that _thing_ , that sense of calm, you know, as the bandages fell away out our vision cleared up. First, we were all bleary eyed and hungover. Then, a peace settled in all at once and we felt like walking gods for three days, everyone. It wore off, but that peace lingered, too, it became a part of us, a constant part of us. Even as we, well, I think even as we fought with out spouses and muttered about existentialism and, you know, did all that shinobi stuff, killing, fighting, stealing and keeping and exposing secrets. Hell, even through the war trials. Why else do you think Orochimaru got off with what amounts to a lifetime of house arrest?"

"Because. He knows Uzumaki Naruto could kill him whenever he has to."

"Nono, it's because, well, I'll tell you. During the proceedings all sorts of heinous things came out about every shinobi village, all the terrible things we've done to each other were exposed. The alliance threatened to crumble, so it was decided that only total forgiveness could save the peace. And, well, the things we've done to each-other are just as bad, and often worse, than the things our missing nin have done. Thus, that had to include people like Orochimaru, even Yakushi Kabuto…"

"Members of Root."

"Taka. All the remaining Akatsuki personnel."

"Really, any missing-nin, there was a whole period of time, what was it, like a year log period, I think, where missing nin were allowed to return and file themselves as officially no longer a part of the village. All it took was to come back, do an interview to make sure they have no evil plans, or whatever, and then they could leave again, free, under the law. Not many did, though, I heard."

"Sure, sure," the fist one says, waving a hand, "Those are all true, but the point is _why_ was peace considered that important? It never has been before, or at least never enough to expose all the dirty laundry. No, it's because of that sense of fulfillment we all felt after the Infinite Tsukoyomi. Our mindsets shifted. We began to work towards a better future, earnestly."

"That's nice."

"It's nice, sure, it's nice. I even like it a little."

"Yeah, it's nice, but, well, we still talk like we talked, we still, you know, feel dread in the morning."

"Yeah."

"You don't get what I'm saying," the first one says, "Just the _experience,_ the mutual experience, of peace was enough. _Everybody, all at once,_ felt _peace_ , with _in themselves._ That _has_ to change things, something."

"Can't be the whole reason."

"Of course it's not the whole reason."

"It miiight be part of the reason, though."

"Maybe…"

"Liar."

"What?"

"Hah."

"Okay, so, what about thi….."


	18. Chapter 18

Standing in the courtyard of the Hyuuga compound, Naruto watches a maid scrub the floor of a porch. She first wets the rag, then squeezes the soapy water out into the bucket, then she pushes the rag down the porch, in a single line, while sort of running forward. There is a beauty to her movements, or to the way she does her work in the periphery, the way the awning stretches out past the porch-railing, draping it in shade, and the way the juniper trees sit so still in the windless afternoon, their stone-like berries littering the ground around their roots.

"Naruto," her father says and he turns around, putting on a smile.

"Yo, or, good afternoon," he says, nodding his head like some sort of bowing gesture. Hiashi raises an eyebrow and strides forward, towards him.

"Have you seen the koi pond?"

Naruto shakes his head. Waving a hand, Hiashi quietly cross the courtyard and Naruto follows him into the house, down a hallway and into a big room where the cooks lounge and straighten up as their master passes through. Naruto glances at them as Hiashi leads him through a door at the end of the room. Stepping outside, Naruto sees the ponds, a pale blue stillness dotted about the budding cherry-blossom trees and shrines.

Naruto follows him to a pond in the middle of it all, the water is still and blue, pale and reflecting the passing clouds overhead. Looking in, he sees his face in the surface, his bright, messy hair, his sharp, blue eyes, the whisker marks on each cheek. Next to his face, is Hiashi's. The cut of his hairline, the grey streaks, the blank but cutting eyes, so white and pale, but so sharp and, not so much empty or flat, but producing walls, producing a sense of injustice. They stand next to one another, looking at their reflections in the surface, and then, the surface breaks and a koi fish appears in the ripples. It's white body, it's little whiskers, it's black, unthinking eyes, glistening, blank. It stares up at them and Hiashi raises a hand, lets fish feed trickle out into the water. Two other koi appear as movement under the surface, and the three of them feast on the feed as it drifts down through the water.

"They're, hu, pretty," is all Naruto thinks to say, trying to manufacture an expression. Hiashi is quiet at first, watching the fish eat, and so Naruto bends down on his haunches and watches, too.

"The biggest carp, that white one, is my eldest daughter's favorite."

"Ohkay."

"A koi lives for only a few years before it falls, much like the cherry blossom petals."

"Is this a poem?"

"No. It can be. Listen to me."

Naruto nods and stands up, facing Hiashi.

"That biggest carp has lived several times longer than it should. I purchased it the night Hanabi was born. Has Hinata told you about her mother?"

Naruto nods and when Hiashi watches him, waiting for a reply, Naruto speaks up, "Just a bit. Hinata said her mother was kind and, and warm. That she very much enjoyed pressing flowers and raising bonsai trees and that they'd go together to the juniper parks and pick the fallen berries to bake into pies."

Hiashi nods slowly.

"I-I also heard she was a healer, a medic-nin, during the Third War."

"She was."

"And that her, um, Hinata's grandfather-"

"My father gave up his eyes for her, yes, so she could become a better medical ninja."

"Yeah."

"What else, anything else?"

"Um," Naruto says, placing a finger on his lips, "She sai- oh! Right. When we were kids she told me once, that, hah, that her mother is a fish. Is.. Is that ko-"

"No, Naruto. This carp is not her mother."

"Right…"

"I purchased it the night Hanabi was born which was the same night Hana, my wife, died."

"Oh."

"In childbirth."

"Right. Right."

"To me, it was as though Hanabi inherited both my wife's name and talents. In this feeling, I pushed Hinata away. I even intended to, one day, place the seal of the branch family on her forehead."

Naruto says nothing, his fist clench in his pockets.

"Only my father believed in her. He told me he had a vision one night of Hinata standing on the moon, her arms spread like a scarecrow. I assumed my father had gone senile, and he had. But, now, now Hinata has inherited Hamura's chakra and I know now that I was wrong about my daughter. I was selfish, in grief…"

And, his voice breaks, his face becomes hard and he stares down at the carp in the water, the ripples fading away, revealing their reflections once more.


	19. Chapter 19

"And," Kakashi starts, some sigh escaping from behind his mask, "Where does the Akimichi Clan stand on this issue?"

Scratching his head and closing his eyes, Choji frowns and then glances over to Shikamaru sat next to him. In total there are shinobi in the room, sat at a wide table, all of them staring at one another. Kakashi, as the Hokage, sits at the front of everything, his back to the wall. Two ANBU stand behind him with their white masks. Sat on his left is the last remaining elder of Hiruzen's time, Homura, former student of the second Hokage. Sat on the Sixth's right is Tsunade, the previous Hokage. Next to her, sits Shikamaru, Konoha's most reliable Jonin. Next to him, Akimichi Choji, new head of the Akimichi Clan. Then, around the table the rest of the way, Hyuuga Hinata with her attendant, Ko, stood behind her; Aburame Shibi; Morino Ibiki, as head of Konoha's Intelligence Program; Haruno Sakura, representing Konoha's Medics; Umino Iruka, representing Konoha's Education; Hamaki Kai, as Chief of the ANBU; and, sat next to Homura, Kato Shizune as the Hokage's Attendant, a position of prominence within Konoha even rivaling the authority of the Jonin Commander in peace time. Sat in chairs along the sides of the room are other Konoha shinobi invited to the proceedings, such as T. Jonin Yamanaka Ino and Jonins Shiranui Genma and Mitarashi Anko; representatives of Konoha's non-shinobi factions with prominent political power, like Inuzuka Tsume as head of BanShee which is the Leaf's most powerful Kunoichi-equality organization and Nara Yokino as representative of Konoha's Mother's Association; as well as two journalists invited in order to seem transparent; and several representatives of non-Konoha powers, including Temari as an ambassador from Suna, Karui as an ambassador from Kumo, Horimoto as owner of the Mangrove Corps and his attedant, Koji, and several other prominent business leader such as the owner of the Fire Mines and stand-ins for the former Feudal Lord who could not be in attendance due to illness.

Flicking his eyes around at all the powerful shinobi and citizens in the room, Choji swallows and speaks up, his voice cracking, he hears a scoff in the back of the room as he stumbles through his words, staring down at the notes Shikamaru wrote for him, talking points, questions to ask, and adivce on how to keep Akimichi Clan interests prominent.

When his little speech is finished the room seems like a haze in front of him and he hadn't realized he'd stood up.

"Okay, thank you, Akimichi Clan," Kakashi says, looking down at his own notes. Choji nods and sits.

"I, I think there's more to say on that," Hinata says, raising her voice as all the faces turn to her, for a moment, she hesitates in the presence of silence, then she continues, "We need to take the Akimichi Clan's worries seriously…."


	20. Chapter 20

"I think it went well," Hinata says, looking into her bowl of ramen and moving the noodle with her chopsticks, watching the way they move about under the surface like eels, "Well, I think it went well for some of us."

"Did the Hyuuga Clan do okay?"

"Yes, yes we did fine. People tend to listen when the Hyuuga Clan speaks."

"Money, I guess, right?"

"Right," she replies before pulling a naruto out of the soup and eating it, "Mmmm."

"Is it good, Hinata?" Ayame asks, leaning on the counter, grinning. Hinata nods and smiles and makes a noise of satisfaction.

"Good," Ayame says, looking off down the counter, "Naruto, did you speak at the thing?"

"Nope," he says, leaning back in his stool.

"Don't fall over."

"I never fall over."

"You did as a kid."

"I was a kid, then."

"That's what I said."

"Yep," he says, leaning forward again and slurping his ramen.

"Heh," Ayame says, pushing herself off the counter as a customer pulls back a hanging flap at the other end of the counter and takes a stool.

"Why didn't you go?" Hinata asks.

"Wasn't invited."

"Huh?"

"Yep."

"Huh.."

"Yeah."

Quietly, they eat their bowls of ramen. Sometimes, Hinata will bump her shoulder into his and he will smirk and she will smile. When their meals are over, they don't wait for their bill because they never have to pay but they leave a tip larger than how much it would've cost. As they leave, they wave and call goodbye to Ayame who calls goodbye too, over her back, as she prepares an order. The sun is setting and there's a line outside. People mingle in the streets, go in and out of shops, and smoke cigarettes and pipes on the corner, against walls, while leaning out open windows. There is much crowd noise, people calling out to one another, shouts of the oncoming night. Hinata sticks close to Naruto as he leads her down the streets.

"Aren't we going to Flint?" Hinata asks as they take a different turn.

"Nahh, do you wanna just go home?"

At first she doesn't respond, then she takes his hand more firmly and he squeezes back and they walk together in a simple silence, aimlessly finding the less crowded streets. As they pass into the residential neighborhoods, they find a certain quiet to the streets, a sort of playfulness, orange lights in windows, curtains drawn, men on porches or patios smoking or chatting quietly. As they pass houses they can smell dinners being served and cooked, and they can hear music playing through windows, sometimes a piano in a parlor or living room, sometimes an old record or a CD, blues and jazz and country bop. The music drifts lazily through walls and closed windows, it comes and goes, and whenever a new music appears it is different than the old one, like some sort of circus or zoo in which you don't know the act or animal you'll run into next. As they pass out from the residential neighborhoods, they realize they won't be going home just yet. They end up round the old park full of ginkgo trees and willow trees, benches and little hills, walkways and monuments. There is the lake lying low beneath the Hokage rock, it's surface glinting from the moon overhead, all those stars, and the odd streetlamp, it's orange orb reflecting on the lake surface. The sun is set, now, behind the monument, and they sit together on the shore watching the last bits of sunset lick away behind the carved heads, listening to the odd noises of the lake at night, the sloshing of water, the odd splash of a fish or a frog, then the crickets appear as a wave of chirping in the dark grasses, and down shore just a bit, they see the showy fireflies zipping and darting.

"It feels like that, sometimes, Hinata," he says, and she turns to look at him, her pale face illuminated by the stars and the moon, somewhere inside she knows that those stars will be washed out when the city is built, "Like, like doesn't life feel sometimes like you're just trying to grasp some light, like some glowing thing above you, and you can't quite see it because it stays in your peripheries no matter where you look. And so you wave your arms wildly and snatch at the air its like you're doing a little, haphazard dance as you try to grab hold of this glowing thing."

"Yes, but," she starts, then bites her lips and he looks at her and his mind goes blank for a moment, "It's like that, but I think the glowing thing, well, its true that you can never look at it straight on and that when you try it always stays in your peripheries, but you also can never look away from it because when you try it stays in your peripheries. You know, it's, it's bright and warm and doesn't leave, I think, I think that's true, Naruto."

When she looks at him again, she sees his mouth is open and there's some curl of light in his eyes, some shimmer, a sort of wide expanse. They stare at each-other and when she tries to kiss him he puts his hand to her chin and keep her away. They just stare at each-other, into each-other eyes. At first it is difficult and they want to look away but they have this feeling like if they do look away, if they give into the self-consciousness, then they will lose something forever. So, they don't. They stare and in time they lose the desire to look away and the eyes become just eyes, clusters of cells. Then, they kiss.


	21. Chapter 21

Some glow in his chest just won't go away, it hangs there somewhere past the sternum, just between the ribs, day after day, all week long, and when she is gone at her family's place or at a meeting of some kind, the glow becomes harsh like a ball of flame and he has to clutch his chest and stare out the window, at the little pill-bug stumbling along the window-sill or at that odd wisp of wind and how it picks up the litter int eh alleyway, tossing it towards the edge of the wall. It exists in the movements of things, now, he spend all his time, when she's away, watching the movements of things; like the odd way people kick back their heels when they walk, or how, all at once, a peeling corner of a poster will fall away, as if there is some pendulum moment, some quiet struggle between gravity and the glue and at some point, inevitably, the gravity wins, at least on the one corner.

These are the thoughts he has now, when she's away, and when he closes his eyes he sees her eyes, pale, moon-like, a cluster of cells and chakra.


	22. Chapter 22

Sitting back in her desk-chair, Sakura rubs her forehead with her palm and groans. Then, she pauses and listens to the quiet of her dark apartment, the odd creak of groan of the walls or the floorboards upstairs, the thump of a neighbor's foot or cat leaping to the floor, or the odd din of a television somewhere past the walls, the soft hum of noise, newsy drawls, static. She sits in her desk chair and pins her bangs up and away, out from her face, behind her ears, and then, she bends over again and keeps writing. The notebook sits in front of her with it's yellow pages and the thin, faint blue lines. Her handwriting becomes messier the further along the page it goes. Up top, and for the first twenty or so pages, it was neat, cursive, orderly, but as the pages roved on the handwriting become more messy, each letter took up more space, and the sentences started to drift below the blue lines. Next to her notebook, sits a textbook full of diagrams and medical terminology, pictures of machines and utensils and step by step instructions on various jutsus and procedures. She is not in medical school, anymore, but still she studies. The books come out every year with new material, new jutsus to learn, new surgical methods and poison counter-actives. It's truly the era of medical ninjutsu, a post war boom in healing. First, she studied under Tsunade, the greatest medical ninja of her time. And, she studied under Shizune, only second to her master as a Leaf healer and a true expert on poisons and poison counter-actives. Sakura took that knowledge to Suna where she healed a shinobi there suffering from a poisons made from a blend of rare cacti and other toxins not found in the desert. Because these toxins were foreign to the Sand's medical nin, Sakura, at only sixteen, was able to heal the shinobi when no others, not even the great healer Chiyo, could not. And from Chiyo, she learned her most powerful healing jutsu, the Life Transfer technique. It's a jutsu a healer can only use once. From there, Sakura continued studying under Tsunade. She even trekked to the Shikkotsu Bone Forest and formed a deal with the great slug, Katsuya, thus obtaining a powerful healing toxins and a method of mass healing. Then, the war began, and she learned how to work expeditiously, she learned how to patch shinobi together just enough that they could keep fighting. Meatball surgery, it was. And, she finally gained self-healing capabilities. After this, she became interested in mental health, too, and began studying on that, an area Tsunade never even ventured towards. Wanting to heal peoples minds, she worked with Ino and obtained a grant to create Konoha's first children's hospital and konoha's first mental health hospital for veterans of wars suffering PTSD, herself included. Her journey as a medical nin has always been about learning the next thing, about venturing towards the next area of study, and here, too, she keeps going.


	23. Chapter 23

Kneeling on the breakfast chair, with his elbows on the windowsill, Naruto stares out the open window. Below, he sees the street he lives on, a dirt road full of hanging clotheslines and power-lines tied up in knots. People pass by underneath, sparse and empty, a couple walking slowly together, they are young, maybe sixteen, seventeen, they walk slowly together and the girls giggles loudly, lets out a little yelp that cuts through the quiet of the backstreet, some head turns in the window across the way, and Naruto sits there sort of shocked after the high-pitched yelp, unsure if she is hurt or what, but then she laughs and he sees her boyfriend is groping her ass.

"Oh," he mutters, letting his gaze drift away. Some bird passes overhead, through het patch of sky he can see from the window. Powerlines sag between the roofs of the tenements, a clothesline connects two balconies. Most balconies have rugs hanging over their railings, drying the in the early afternoon sun, many have potted plants in the angles of shade from the awnings and gutters, several balcony's have bicycles propped up, or boxes covered in blankets and tarp, a few garden gnomes, a few bird baths and many bird feeders. One balcony has several jugs of water. Another has stacks of plastic chairs.

He imagines what Hinata would do if they were walking together and he pinched her ass. She'd probably let out a little noise, blush heavily, and stare at the ground as they keep walking. He'd feel like a molester. Or, she'd notice his hand moving before he does it, and maybe she'd brace herself, or grab it and pretend like she just wanted to hold hands, maybe she really did want to jus hold hands. A part of him thinks she might grab his ass first, there's always that off chance of a surprise. When quiet people become comfortable with another person, they tend to do surprising things.

Down the street, he sees a girl with dark hair. She carries a grocery bag and he can see an onion stalk poking out from the bag. Its his grocery bag, he sees, the re=usable one.

"Hinata!" he calls, leaning further out. She looks up and pauses, then waves, he waves back.


	24. Chapter 24

There is a cadence to drinking alone that sort of annoys Kiba. It's the way the beer slowly disappears, the way the television stays on, that static noise, that continuous stream of images and laugh tracks and all these beautiful people talking, staring out at you in the living room, on the couch, with the pizza and the beer. There's all these people in the television talking to you, but you can't even talk back to them. You can only receive input. You interact by changing the channel. That, all that, is part of the annoying cadence of drinking alone, but there's more. There's that odd silence that happens when the mind drifts from the television or it turns off or the people stop talking for a bit, and then you're suddenly in your apartment, holding a half-gone beer bottle, and the apartment is dark and quiet, maybe an odd scuttling noise of a mouse somewhere, or some sound of people moving around upstairs, but it is quiet and dark and the screen of the television illuminates your face, a sort of gray light that flickers and moves but stays contained on your face. And, there's the way you stand up every so often to pee. The sudden change in room, pace, the swinging perspective, the movement, the feeling of moving. The peeing is so different from the rest of the hours of sitting and watching that, the next morning, you only really remember peeing. Or, maybe more accurately, when you get up to pee, you become awake in a sense, it's slightly less habitual than the sitting and drinking, and so you notice it, the stinging light of the bathroom, the coldness of the tiles, the sound of your pee hitting the toilet water, the rush of the flushing, the chill of the water and the soap. It's all so different, texturally, viscerally, than the sitting and drinking and eating and watching, which is like a slow haze, that you notice it, the peeing, you only notice the peeing. Then, you sit again, you pop another beer, you feel that odd burning in the roof of your mouth and the back of your tongue, and that way your gut expands, how it hangs there, fat and bulging. One day, you woke up and you were fat. You realized it as the dreary sunlight of late morning shone upon your face and your stomach, how the light hangs there in the window, almost dewy, and all those sounds of people getting on with their days, the tread of bike wheels, the doors slamming, the muffled conversations of people passing under your window. You woke up and realizes you're fat, all of a sudden, twenty years compounded into a single moment. Then, after sitting up in bed, you realized you always sort of knew it, that you had an inkling the whole time, and you feel some odd satisfaction in realizing you weren't totally ignorant. Then, you stand, and you feel the pain in your gut as it hangs, the creak of your knees, and that odd satisfaction washes away, down some pit or well, and you're left standing there with some burning dread in the back of your throat, like something dying inside of you, or like some ditch dug in your chest you only just realized. You stand there and feel it and it seems to go so well with the dewy sunlight hanging in the window, and the way it lies still and white upon the windowsill, the bedsheets, the empty bottle of beer, their residue liquid glinting in the light.


	25. Chapter 25

"Let's talk about truth," Sakura says, sipping at the glass of red wine. Across from her, Hinata looks down into her own glass, at the way the red lingers in the rim after a sip, like some sort of lipstick.

"Like what?"

"Well," Sakura says, glancing off towards the window, the way the night sits still and flat outside, the odd residue light of a streetlamp and the dark electrical cords cutting across the blackness, "I guess, when, welll, I guess when I'm with Sasuke, we always end up talking about truth, and justice, and what it means to be human, you know?"

"Philosophy?"

"Yeah, Ethics, all that stuff. On his travels, he's met all sorts of different people with different cultures and different ideas about what it means."

"It?"

"This, you know, living, human stuff. He met this group of people on an island down south, I think it was, I don't remember any names, but a big part of their diet is this large, bay-leaf-like plant. They have it with almost everything, like a sort of plate or bowl, I guess, they put all their food - oir, I mean, they wrap their food in this leaf and eat it that way. And so, anyway, this big leaf, in their creation story, is composed of light, you know? It's the sun that gave birth to twin brothers - always the patriarchy, anyway - those twin brothers are this leaf and the people who eat the leaf, I forget their name. And so, when they eat, basically everytime they eat, they eat their brother. This results in a respect for food that I think we're losing in our society. You've seen the way they slaughter chickens, now, the stuff they inject into their food to make them fatter…"

"Yeah, I visited Horimoto's farms, um, two weeks ago."

"And the chickens couldn't walk, right?"

"Not all of them, no. They could get a few steps before collapsing."

"We're losing respect for out food, Hinata, and this group of people in the southern islands, well, they eat their brother, figuratively. Or, well, you have to understand that they think of family differently. I don't know, I've heard of cannibal tribes who, well, we have this animalized view of cannibals, as if they are some sort of evil, some savagery, but I think we only have that view because, well, it all goes back to patriarchy, I think, domination, conquest."

"What do you think it means to be human, Sakura?"

Taking a sip of wine, she looks down into the glass before speaking, "Well, I'm not sure. On the one hand, being a doctor, I have this sort of diagram in my head of 'human,' you know, a system of chakra and blood, and all that scientific jargon. It sort of removes me from the whole thing, in my mind, but in reality I am also human. I'm sure you can relate, with your Byakugan you must view people like that, too?"

"Well, for me, it's like there's two sides to people. There's the outside that I see most of the time. Then there's the inside that I see with my Byakugan. It's a very surface thing, I guess, but I know what you mean. On the other hand, I think people are their ideals more than their chakra networks and faces, you know? Especially as shinobi."

"Then there's that. Shinobi. What it means to be Shinobi, what it means to be human."

"It's changing, though, what it means to be Shinobi."

"It is. When we grew up, we were taught to be tools of war. But now, after the war, well, I don't know, it's like people are trying to take the _war_ out of the _shinobi_. It's an odd contrast, to be sure. Many of the old guard are having a tough time with it. Even Kakashi-sensei. He's tired of it all, of war, of being a weapon, but it's all he knows, he still wears his uniform."

Then, they are quiet and sipping the wine. The bottle sits between them, on a coaster on the coffee table. The television sits across from them, images flickering across the screen, on mute, the flicking images illuminating their faces like candle-light, like that way candle-light moves and flickers across peoples faces.

"I think," Sakura mutters, then picks up her voice, "When it comes to being human, well, I think people have different definitions of that. I'm not saying being human means being unique, or anything. But it does mean having a culture, you know? Being human is being part of a culture. Then, is family a sub-group of that, or just a thing on it's own?"

"I'm not sure. And, well, not everyone has family."

"Right, right," Sakura says, looking up, "That's right, you're right. But, well, even Naruto _found_ family."

"Team Seven."

"Iruka-sensei, too. And, well, and you."

Blushing, Hinata takes another sip of wine and Sakura smirks.

"Then, maybe the desire for family? Or that family connection. That feeling of bonds. Maybe that's part of being human."

"Probably. I think, though, when asking what it means to be human, I think we have to start with 'matter and energy,' you know?"

"Hmm?"

"Well. I guess before we can even answer the cultural, social aspects of humanity, we have to start without our biology, what we're literally made of. We could argue that 97 or so percent of what it means to be human is also what it means to be chimpanzee, you know?"

"Yeah."

"And so, well…. I think all good philosophy also ends with 'I don't know.'"

"Is religion part of what it means to be human?"

"Well, maybe it used to be."

"Maybe."

"Have you ever seen two thousand people cross a street?"

"What, are you talking about the protests?"

"Yes."

"I heard it, through the window, it was like, it was like this lake up north my family and I used to go to every summer. There's all these spots where you can sort of hide, like nooks in the foliage and rocks, and you can hear the roar of the lake from that hidden place. I was in my kitchen when I heard the protestors marching by like two streets away. It sounded exactly like the lake."

"Wow."

"I wonder if protest is part of being human."

"Hopefully, I think so. Maybe, subversion, or progressive ideals? I'm not sure where to categorize protest. Maybe, transgression."

"Maybe. Ideals? Having ideals?"

"Yeah, ideals."


	26. Chapter 26

"And, she's caught between those two things, you know, passion and convention."

"That's sort of beautiful, Hinata, but I don't understand why she doesn't just go after him, then, if she loves him, you know?"

"Well, maybe this, hmmm, well, it may be the same reason why you didn't just go after him, back then, when he left the village for the first time."

"I wasn't in _love_ with him, Hinata."

"Yes, but, the reason you didn't, well-"

"I would've died, definitely. I hate to admit it, but Sasuke could have killed me back then, and he might have. And, Orochimaru definitely would have. Kabuto, too. All of them. Plus, I just, I don't know, being a kid back then, confined to the village as a Jinchuriki, it basically just didn't cross my mind. Me leaving the village to retrieve him would have been the opposite of what I didn't want him to do, right? Did that make sense?"

"I get it."

"And, well, heh, between men, well, it's just that I lost to him in a fight, you know? I had no choice at that point. He'd made his choice, and I disagreed with it, with my fists, but he won and I knew I had to get stronger, first."

"So, convention, then."

"Maybe."

"Well, think of it like this. Sakura has a hospital she's running, she's invested in the patients, the doctors and nurses, and the mental health program that she started. She can't just leave it all behind. She's working towards Konoha's future in a time of great change."

"But she _loves_ him, though."

"Yes, she does. She's caught between those two things, passion and convention. I understand too, a little…"

"Really? Do you, do you feel that way, too?"

"I used to."

"And, what did you do?"

"I chose love."

"Right. Right, heheh."

"Heh. Well, but my choice was easier than her's, I think."


	27. Chapter 27

Her face bent down, her dark, shiny hair falls like a curtain over her eyes, leaving only a few, sharp gaps of visible skin, of her pale forehead, and the tops of her pale eyes and her small nose. Her knuckles flex as she twirls the little spoon in the mug, mixing the cream and the coffee. Using her other hand, her elbow on the table-top, she pulls her hair back behind her ears, revealing her face, again, and her big, white eyes, and her sharp downturn of her nose, and the fullness of her pale-pink lips, glistening just slightly. Feeling him watching her, she looks up and smiles sweetly, a small, happy smile, and something in his guts and his chest tightens in an almost painful way. He loves her, he realizes then, at that moment, just as he has realized it in several moments in the past few weeks since the moon fell, since they started dating.

"I made rice cakes yesterday, for my sister," she tells him, looking down, then up again, a thin layer of pinkish blush invading her pale skin. He scratches his left temple and sighs.

"I wish I'd been in town," he says, almost stiffly, and she looks at him. A silence passes between them. The heat of their coffees radiating from the porcelain. The tinkling of the spoon as she continues swirling, absently, letter her gaze fall past his shoulder, towards the door to the cafe which opens and the bell rings and the noises of the room become a little sharper. The aimless chatting of the young couples surrounding them. The orders barked in the kitchen behind the counter. The leaping steam, the boiling pots, the dinging bells, the names called out, the slurping noise of the water dispenser, the tearing sound as people open their tea-bags, someone's loud laugh in the corner of the room, someone's groan somewhere else, someone's idle gossip and someone's lingering ramble. The noises around them linger, sharp and distinct in each way, as they stare just past each-other's shoulders, and when they accidentally make eye contact, the noises of the room simmer and become dim, faraway and dull. Something settles in his chest as he looks at her, something releases it's grip. He smiles, and she smiles back, he sees some light turn on in her eyes, she pulls the spoon out from her coffee, sets it down on the rim of the little plate, and picks up the mug, the steam curling from it's basin, obscuring her face as she takes a sip, watching him over the rim. His smile widens, he laughs once, leans back in his chair and picks up his own coffee, staring down at the dark-brown surface, his reflection obscured in the darkness of the liquid. He raises it and drinks, the bitter and the sweet all at once, touching his tongue, the heat as it grazes his throat, as it falls down to the pit of his gut. He realizes he is hungry.

"Do you want to get something to eat," he asks, looking at her as he sets down the mug. A sudden fall of comfort between them, almost impetuous in the way nerves and comfort can come and go as suddenly as wind. She smiles and nods her head, sets her mug back down on the plate with a little thunk.

"Ichiraku," she asks. Closing his eyes, he grins wildly and laughs through his teeth in that prideful, almost ironic way he does. With his eyes closed, he does not see her smile widen, her own laughter tumbling out into her fist, while the blush in her face deepens. She wonders how long it will be until she can normal around him, then she wonders if maybe this is normal, this blushing face, this dizziness, this anxiety. No, surely it is not. But, one day it will settle, she knows, because she loves him and always has, and she knows, now, for certain, that he loves her, too.


End file.
